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Peterson: Trade treasured tax breaks for true reform

That’s how we sometimes respond when a lecture begins by lamely belaboring the painfully obvious.

Some of last week’s congressional testimony by acting Internal Revenue Service Commissioner Danny Werfel seemed to deserve the same reply.

Werfel allowed that his agency seems to have lost the trust of the American people.

Well, duh.

First it systematically targeted conservative applicants for tax exemptions for intense special scrutiny and lied about it. Next, an IRS official invoked her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.

Moreover, between 2010 in 2012 — about when the agency was looking under beds for tea party members — it shelled out $49 million, supposedly for training conferences. Those sessions were held at hotels where rooms cost the IRS as much as $3,500 a night. We’ve also learned that, at one confab, IRS officials accepted improper freebies from private benefactors. Don’t be surprised if there’s more dirt by the time this paper arrives.

But training for what? How to ferret out hidden teabags, maybe? Anyway, it exemplified your tax dollars at work — on behalf of a president who’s said too little revenue, not too much spending, is our main budget problem.

Meanwhile, the IRS is gearing up to ask Congress for more money, mostly, it says, to bankroll implementation of Obamacare.

Here’s another well, duh: For reasons are arguably both cogent and petty, that’s likely to be a non-starter, especially in the Republican-dominated House. But it might bring us to, as the cliché goes, a teachable moment.

Consider an administration talking point: The tax code has thousands of loopholes, often described by weasel words that hinder the IRS from sorting out legal deductions from bogus ones.

In case you missed the intended conclusion, it was supposed to get the IRS off the hook.

After all, or so the argument goes, it takes intense — even aggressive — scrutiny to root out evasive scams.

That, of course, might be persuasive if there were any evidence that the IRS was nearly as zealous in bird-dogging liberal groups as conservative ones.

But even though it doesn’t make the IRS look better, the underlying point — hardly a new one — makes sense.

Indeed, the tax code is an almost undecipherable maze of lobbyist-driven preferences for special interests.

You name it; it’s probably there: Breaks for homeowners, insurers, filmmakers, oil barons, farmers, makers of cars few people want to buy, racetracks, and “green” industries that can’t make it on their own.

We’ve long known what to do.

The solution: Redo the code, untrim the fiscal Christmas tree, and throw out the special-interest tax shelters. And, along the way, lower overall rates without costing the treasury a dime.

Let people devote their time and energy to making more money rather than protecting it from the feds. Or, for that matter, to spending another day at the beach with the kids.

Then, by the way, the IRS wouldn’t need more money from Congress — or such snoopy eyes and long arms.

Yes, many people would grouse about some parts of any such measure. I, for one, would lament losing deductions for property taxes and home mortgage interest. But I wouldn’t miss writing that big check to my accountant or wasting countless hours shuffling through papers in search of needed documents.

Overall, there would be more winners than losers. And, however begrudgingly, most people are willing to pay taxes if they don’t think they’re being played for saps by rules that let insiders game the system.

As Obamacare’s unfolding complications seem to suggest, it may be too much to expect that the tax code can be successfully overhauled by a single piece of legislation.

Maybe a multi-step approach makes more sense.

Either way, the idea is to reverse-engineer the old congressional appropriations game known as “logrolling.” Translation: “I’ll vote for your new post office if you support my new Amtrak substation.”

In contrast, under reverse logrolling, various groups would yield their treasured tax breaks if others did likewise. Call it another — but more constructive — form of “I’ll scratch your back if you’ll scratch mine.”

Would this be legislatively difficult and complex? As Sarah Palin would say, you betcha.